A Noble Knight...

Look what Drew brought home today...

Seriously - what more than this could I ever want to hear from my son's teacher?! Proud of you, Drew!!!

My sister, the artist...

Check out the handiwork of my little sister, Tessa. She made this all by hand - hand painted, hand lettered. She did her own and my brother's wedding invites too (check them out here http://tessaplusadam.blogspot.com/2011/10/invitations.html ). Who thinks she should open an etsy shop!!??

Double Digits?!

Has it really only been 10 years since Drew looked like this?!

I feel old!

Drew celebrated the big 10 this week. I often miss my chubby, toe-headed side-kick of years gone by. There's something about your first born. I guess it's all the one-on-one time you spend together? Drew's been along on ALL of our adventures...from the starving grad-student days in Chicago to our time in London...and every move in between (we've had 11 addresses in 6 different states/countries since he was born!).

I love this kid - and even though sometimes I want to squish him - I'm glad he's mine.

OK - pictures of the birthday boy...

Cake!

Hugging Addie to thank her for the poster she made him for his birthday?!

My mouth is still hanging open in disbelief!

Opening presents!

Birthday date with Mom & Dad ;)

Christmas 2011

Christmas was good this year...low key, but good. We stayed close to home. My parents were here (of course) and we had visits from Matt & Amanda and TJ & Katie. Most of our time was spent being lazy and eating junk (which I'm paying for now)! Boring, huh?!

Merry Christmas!

Happy New Year!

Okay! I'm ready to get back on the blogging wagon! 2011 was not a good blogging year and I miss having that record of our family. So here's to a new year and a renewed resolve to keep up with this thing!

First day of school 2011...

I'm happy to report a successful first day of school at our house! Drew and Addison woke up yesterday excited and were ready in record time. They ate breakfast without fighting and didn't complain about morning scripture study. They even came home happy - said they liked their teachers and even liked and ate the lunches I packed for them! Amazing!

This morning...not quite the same story. School seems to have lost it's excitement already. I had to pull Addie out of bed...Drew threw a fit about wearing a certain pair of shorts...someone wanted something we didn't have for breakfast...scriptures were "boring"...and they left the house late. Oh well! Yesterday was good while it lasted!?

Here's the picture: Addison off to 2nd Grade and Drew to 4th...

Then there's Noah. He LOVES school! He's in the PPCD program again this year. We took him to meet his teacher last week. He was crushed that we were just there for a visit and not a full day of school! So yesterday was a very happy day for him...especially the bus ride home - something he's missed all summer! Unlike Drew and Addie though, he was even more excited to go today - probably because today was his first day to ride the bus TO school! I wish I would have taken a picture of his face as the bus drove up this morning! Last year, he only rode the bus home. I'm still a little hesitant about putting him on the bus for 45 minutes each way, but we'll see how it goes. The hour+ roundtrip to school (smack dab in the middle of everyday) was really killing my productivity. Like I said - we'll see.

So here's Noah's first day photo - taken at school with my phone because I forgot to do it before we left!

Now if it would just cool down! The first day of school was 104 (our 56th day over 100 this year - not that I'm counting) and the next 7 days look pretty much identical. At least the kids are stuck inside doing something productive now that they're in school?!

The "Toothbrush " Incident...

This kid is going to do me in! Not too long after we were done with the broken arm, Luke landed himself in the ER again, but this time he really hit it out of the park! This all happened back in May - Tues the 17th...I was in the bathroom the getting ready, when I heard Luke's "I'm hurt" cry. Came out to find that Noah had given Luke a little shove and his mouth was bleeding. I figured he's bit his tongue, but could never find the source of the blood. The bleeding stopped pretty quickly though, and he seemed ok, so I finished getting ready and we headed out the door to run some errands. Before too long however, I could tell something was off. Luke was still upset, wouldn't drink, and now was drooling and looked like this:

Yeah - not my usually smiley little Luke! So I called our pediatrician and headed to her office. After taking a look, she could see a laceration in the back of his throat. I then remembered that my toothbrush obsessed little guy had been brushing his teeth around that time. Hmmm..... The wound didn't look bad though, so she gave Luke some Tylenol, and we headed home (where I found the offending toothbrush on the floor). A few minutes after we got home, the phone rang and it was the pediatrician. She didn't feel settled about Luke's situation and ended up consulting with some ENT friends at Medical City Hospital. She wanted us to take him to the ER there. Ugh. So I called Wade, told him to head home and off we went to the ER at Medical City. So here we are in the ER Tuesday night:

Luke was still not eating, drooling like crazy, running a low grade fever and was pretty swollen on one side of his neck. The ER doc kind of blew us off until we convinced him to consult with the ENT the pediatrician had talked to. They decided it was time for a CT scan! The CT showed some internal bleeding. The ER doc suddenly changed his tune and had us admitted to the PICU at about 2 am.

We spent the night in the PICU while the docs there tried to decide what they wanted to do. We needed to find out if he was still bleeding, but the best way of doing that was under debate because there was risk of clots, strokes, aneurysms...minor stuff like that! Finally, they sent Luke's CT scan to a Dr. Rollins - who is an uber-specialist in pediatric angiography and interventional radiology. Apparently, she saw enough concern to advise the doctors to transfer us to Children's Medical Center where she could see Luke. They wouldn't let us drive him the 3 miles ourselves, so Luke took his first trip in an ambulance, and was NOT happy about it (neither am I now that we've found out our insurance isn't going to cover much of the $5000 bill)!

So we made it to Children's PICU the afternoon of the Wednesday the 18th, where we started talking to doctors who all seemed to be a little annoyed that we were there - basically said the Medical City docs were idiots and we were too for being so concerned! I was getting really ticked off and was really confused at why the doctors at Medical City were so much more concerned that the doctors here! Finally, we found one doctor who listened long enough for us to explain that we were sent here to see Dr. Rollins - that she had seen Luke's CT scan and wanted him transferred here. We had assumed that they knew all this - that the doctors at both hospitals had communicated. We were wrong! Realizing Dr. Rollins was involved pulled the docs out of their "know-it-all" attitude. They started putting all the pieces together and stopped treating us like idiots. I still am completely dumbfounded how in a world of instant communication, this could have happened. How many mistakes have been made this way!!!?? Anyway, we spent about 24 hours in the PICU at Children's until they felt like he was improving enough that active bleeding was no longer a concern and they moved us to the trauma floor Thursday at about noon. Now the worry was that, though he wasn't necessarily bleeding, there might be damage to blood vessels. Vessel damage could result in thrown clots or ruptures which could cause an aneurysm or stroke. Unfortunately, Dr. Rollins was not going to be available until Friday, so we had another 24 hours to kill with Luke, who by this time was acting pretty normal and was really sick of being stuck in a crib hooked up to monitors and IVs. We convinced the nurses to let us take him out for awhile. We tried first to just take a walk, but we couldn't keep up with him and were afraid he'd pull out the IV! We decided the wagon was safer.

Finally, Friday was here and the decision had been made to do an angiogram to check for vessel damage. That, of course, meant putting him out and handing him over to strangers - not a fan! But everything went great, the angio came back clean, and here is our baby boy in recovery:

Trying to wake up and wanting "Daddy". He became really attached to Wade at the hospital which was really cute to watch.

So, everything was good! Besides a bacterial infection from the puncture wound, we were good to go! We made it out by about 8pm Friday night - antibiotics in hand and instructions to watch for unlikely symptoms: fevers above 102, swelling, more drooling , etc. Yay!

OR NOT! By the next morning, Luke's fever had spiked, the side of his neck with the puncture was swelling again, he was swimming in drool again, and was just not good. After a call to the pediatrician, she called the Hospital and told them we were headed back. They had us come to the ER, where we figured we'd be fast tracked back to the docs that knew his situation so we could get things taken care of. WRONG! We sat in the ER for 6-7 hours in a little room with no food and nothing to do! We finally asked and they brought us some graham crackers and gatorade - thanks a lot. Luckily Luke felt rotten enough that he was pretty subdued and ended up falling asleep for a lot of it.

Here we are, back in the ER!

Finally, after taking a couple of x-rays to check for an abscess and drawing some blood, they admitted us back to the trauma floor for IV antibiotics. It didn't take long for Luke to perk back up. He kept pulling the monitors off and wanted out! Luckily the nurses let us take off the monitors when he was awake and only hooked him up to the IV when it was time for another round of antibiotics.

They let us out at about 12:30 pm Sunday afternoon - for good this time!!! Goodbye hospital!!!

So here's to hoping we can keep Luke out of medical distress for awhile, though I'm not holding my breath! I have a feeling Luke takes after his dad and will not be a stranger to the ER!

Noah is 4!!!

Just a few pictures from Noah's birthday party...

We had to open presents first, of course!!!

On to the cake! Noah requested this race car (from the "What's New Cupcake?" book - I did NOT come up with this on my own!) so Grandma Julie made him a birthday shirt to match!

The favorite gift! Grandma Wanna gave him this truck and it's been glued to his side since!

Happy Birthday, Noers! We're so proud of you!

Dance Recital 2011...

Cute Addie had her dance recital this weekend. She tried a hip-hop class this year - she was bored with the ballet and tap - needed something with a little more "addie-tude"! This class fit the bill and I have to say, it was way more fun to watch! They danced to a song from "High School Musical" that was all about prom. Lots of hair flipping (totally Addie!)! Great job, Missy-Moo!

Broken Baby!

So Luke took a little spill in the backyard...tripped in the grass and caught himself with his chubby hands. It was a really minor fall - the kind he does many times each day, but this time he actually cried about it (the kid is tough as nails!) so we wondered if something was up. After watching him for a little while, we could tell that his wrist was bothering him and decided to take him in for an x-ray. Sure enough...broken wrist! The break was minor, but if he fell on it again (which he would do, repeatedly), he might make things worse or, at minimum, keep the break from healing. So we ended up with 3 weeks in a cast!

Here we are at the urgent care center where they took x-rays and put on a splint to immobilize his wrist until we could get into an orthopedic specialist the next day (this all, of course, happened at about 4:30 pm as the doctors offices are closing).

The next day we put on the cast. They put it up past his elbow so he couldn't wiggle out of it!

The cast didn't slow him down for a second, except at bedtime. He likes to go down holding his duck, drinking a bottle and twirling his hair (all at the same time). This is tough with 2 hands, impossible with one! He learned to adapt though!

No slowing down his iPadding skills!

And we made it to 3 weeks! Thank goodness it wasn't any longer - that cast was starting to reek! Luke sat perfectly still for the doc while he sawed off the cast, and as soon as it was off, he was ready to get using that arm again!

So, any bets on how long it takes for Luke to injure himself again? I have a feeling this kid is going to take after his dad!!!

Noah's Endoscopy

Fun subject, eh? Figured it was worth a post though? I haven't been very good about keeping the info current on Noah, but after some success with diet and supplement interventions on a behavioral side, we still really have struggles with Noah's eating and sleeping - he doesn't eat or sleep much.

Noah's was diagnosed with reflux when he was only a day old. As he grew up, he seemed to grow out of his reflux for the most part. A couple of months ago, during a particularly sleepless/foodless couple of weeks for Noah, it dawned on me that maybe that wasn't the case - that reflux was actually causing him enough discomfort to affect eating and sleeping. After all, most of the reason we assumed Noah had outgrown it, was because his outward symptoms had lessened...spitting up, irritability, etc., things that most kids grow out of regardless. So, we decided to try putting him back on prevacid to see if anything changed. There was immediate improvement in Noah's eating/sleeping and mood. So we took that as enough evidence to consult with a pediatric gastroenterologist which in turn led to us deciding it was time to go in and take a good look at things! It's hard to tell with a little guy like Noah. Although his communication skills are pretty good at this point, he still has a hard time telling us things like "where it hurts", especially if there's not a visible wound he can point to. Plus, if he's had some level of discomfort his whole life due to reflux, he probably wouldn't even think to tell us about it! Anyway - we just wanted to get a comprehensive picture of anything that might be going on in there. We figure if there isn't anything to find, at least that will be one more thing we can check of the list to worry about! Here are some pictures of the day:

Getting all prepped and ready - including taking a little goofy juice to make him nice and calm (I could use a supply of that at home)!

Heading in for the endo...

In recovery...

Checking out the awesome train display on our way out of the hospital!

UPDATE: Noah's endoscopy, biopsies and allergy testing came back completely clean! This is great of course, but a little part of me was hoping they would find something we could treat -and not by some controversial method - that would explain some of the difficulties we experience with Noah. Not the case! So we move on, able to cross a few things off our list of potential issues and treatments and concentrate on other solutions for Noah. Onward!!!